From Project Syndicate
COPENHAGEN – When it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six meters (20 feet) of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world.
Gore’s scientific advisor, Jim Hansen from NASA, has even topped his protégé. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 meters (80 feet), with a six-meter rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive-by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of creation.”
Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn’t increased. It has slightly decreased . Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy – 3-4 millimeters (0.2 inches). For two years, sea levels have declined. (All of the data are available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)
This doesn’t mean that global warming is not true. As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase, causing the sea to warm and expand somewhat. Thus, the sea-level rise is expected to pick up again. This is what the United Nations climate panel is telling us; the best models indicate a sea-level rise over this century of 18 to 59 centimeters (7-24 inches), with the typical estimate at 30 centimeters (one foot). This is not terrifying or even particularly scary – 30 centimeters is how much the sea rose over the last 150 years.
Simply put, we’re being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories. Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists, and requires the sea-level rise to accelerate roughly 40-fold from today. Imagine how climate alarmists would play up the story if we actually saw an increase in the sea-level rise.
Increasingly, alarmists claim that we should not be allowed to hear such facts. In June, Hansen proclaimed that people who spread “disinformation” about global warming – CEOs, politicians, in fact anyone who doesn’t follow Hansen’s narrow definition of the “truth” – should literally be tried for crimes against humanity.
It is depressing to see a scientist – even a highly politicized one – calling for a latter-day Inquisition. Such a blatant attempt to curtail scientific inquiry and stifle free speech seems inexcusable.
But it is perhaps also a symptom of a broader problem. It is hard to keep up the climate panic as reality diverges from the alarmist predictions more than ever before: the global temperature has not risen over the past ten years, it has declined precipitously in the last year and a half, and studies show that it might not rise again before the middle of the next decade. With a global recession looming and high oil and food prices undermining the living standards of the Western middle class, it is becoming ever harder to sell the high-cost, inefficient Kyoto-style solution of drastic carbon cuts.
A much sounder approach than Kyoto and its successor would be to invest more in research and development of zero-carbon energy technologies – a cheaper, more effective way to truly solve the climate problem.
Hansen is not alone in trying to blame others for his message’s becoming harder to sell. Canada’s top environmentalist, David Suzuki, stated earlier this year that politicians “complicit in climate change” should be thrown in jail. Campaigner Mark Lynas envisions Nuremberg-style “international criminal tribunals” against those who dare to challenge the climate dogma. Clearly, this column places me at risk of incarceration by Hansen & Co.
But the globe’s real problem is not a series of inconvenient facts. It is that we have blocked out sensible solutions through an alarmist panic, leading to bad policies.
Consider one of the most significant steps taken to respond to climate change. Adopted because of the climate panic, bio-fuels were supposed to reduce CO2 emissions. Hansen described them as part of a “brighter future for the planet.” But using bio-fuels to combat climate change must rate as one of the poorest global “solutions” to any great challenge in recent times.
Bio-fuels essentially take food from mouths and puts it into cars. The grain required to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol is enough to feed one African for a year. Thirty percent of this year’s corn production in the United States will be burned up on America’s highways. This has been possible only through subsidies that globally will total $15 billion this year alone.
Because increased demand for bio-fuels leads to cutting down carbon-rich forests, a 2008 Science study showed that the net effect of using them is not to cut CO2 emissions, but to double them. The rush towards bio-fuels has also strongly contributed to rising food prices, which have tipped another roughly 30 million people into starvation.
Because of climate panic, our attempts to mitigate climate change have provoked an unmitigated disaster. We will waste hundreds of billions of dollars, worsen global warming, and dramatically increase starvation.
We have to stop being scared silly, stop pursuing stupid policies, and start investing in smart long-term R&D. Accusations of “crimes against humanity” must cease. Indeed, the real offense is the alarmism that closes minds to the best ways to respond to climate change.
Ron McCarley #22
Here is a simple example of precision and accuracy. I once had a mercury thermometer with a glass bulb glued to a cardboard backing that contained the temperature scale. One day the bulb fell off and I glued it back on. But I screwed the position, so that when the tempurature was 70 degrees, my thermometer showed 75 degrees. If the temp rose to 70.5 degrees, my thermometer showed 75.5 degrees. In other words the precision was still quite good and I could easily detect a change in tempurature of only one half of a degree, but the accuracy was quite poor, since the individual readings were off by 5 degrees.
In this case the problem was simply poor calibration, but in a complex instrument there can be many effects that may compromise accuracy without affecting precision.
Ron McCarley, I think that I might be able to point out the difference to something that I have to do in my work (machining). Having measured, say, a hole, I read it as being 1.000″ in diameter, but my vernier had been recently dropped, so I have an uncertain error. However, if I machine a dowel to 1.000″, using the same, possibly inaccurate, vernier, then, because the vernier measures the item precisely, if wrongly, the dowel will fit. Accuracy, on the other hand has been lost, because there may be an error in the vernier, but I don’t know what it is.
Similarly, the Jason data may only be known to within 3.5 cm, but if the error is relatively constant, then, if the reading tomorrow is 3.6cm, then I can assume the level has gone up from the previous level by a very small amount, I just don’t know exactly what either levels are, just that day two is up by 0.1cm.
I think.
Countering the water being held back in dams, is the water that has been drained from the world’s aquifers over the last century. That has to account for some of the sea level rise.
Ron,
It’s not that the answer is wrong, ala 2+2=5. It’s more like, sea level = 100M +/- 2.5cm. Then we take the same reading 100 times, and all readings are within 2.5mm of each other.
Re: Charles Price answer: The NASA site claims a pecision of 20mm and an accuracy of 35mm for the Jason satellite. It is unknown to me if they’re incorporating one into the other, but either one is much larger than the 3-3.5mm they claim for sea level rise for the past few years. I guess I get the difference between the two terms, but both seem to be way off from what they’re measuring.
Where are the giant robots? There are supposed to be giant robots!
Therefore, he’s not a mad scientist. Or not a scientist.
I assume you mean wind-powered giant robots?
jeez,
Who would want a giant robot that only works 25% of the time; and, otherwise, just clutters up the place?
I agree!
Functional efficiency would be far less important than making sure recycling centers would be in place to deal with any wind-powered robots disabled by the hero.
I give up! I’m outnumbered. I’m going to assume that the orbital precision of 20mm doesn’t affect the measurement precision of the Jason satellite, and that even though the accuracy of the satellite is 35mm, its precision is on the order of 2-3mm. Anyway, I’m happy that sea level is dropping. It seems like it should have been with Argo temp numbers the way they are.
Peter — re sea levels Lomborg is merely pointing out that the prediction of drastic rising of the levels isn’t happening lately.
“It’s incredibly disingenuous to use two years of data to claim that sea levels aren’t rising.”
Too many of your persuasion miss the point of this and similar observations; e.g. recent temp coolings relative to what came before. You and yours point out that the long term trend is what matters, as if skeptics are somehow too stupid to fathom the obvious.
On the other hand, what’s repeated in movies and the media and so forth is some 6 feet of sea level rise by 2100, and a bit of quick arithmetic says that the **average** ought to be 18.3 mm per year. Bear in mind that was based on 6 FEET; imagine if I expanded the average annual rise to the actual 6 METER claim. …Hint: bigger number…
Lomborg is merely pointing out that we’re not seeing this, and backs it up with a small factoid to underscore the point, which from what I could tell, one has to work quite hard at to miss.
jeez,
No more calls. We have a winner.
— Ron McCarley —
Forget the references to verniers etc as these are misleading. Accuracy is an indicator of the ability of an instrument to accurately measure across it’s field of view. If a rectangular field of view then the accuracy of being able to measure the same object in various places ought not exceed the 35mm figure stated. That is, the absolute spread of derived measurements has to be inside this number. The actual performance will generally follow the toolmaker’s rule, which essentially is that the precision of the instrument ought to be 10x smaller than what’s being measured.
What the vernier argument posited and what you think are similar in that the accuracy isn’t equivalent to the absolute calibration. This is a separate thing. The accuracy refers to the ability to get the correct measurement even if an object is not perfectly aligned in the instrument centre.
As for the precision, this number is generally a figure representing the absolute (guaranteed) 3 sigma repeatability. If 20 mm then what this means is that 99.7% of measurements will fall in the 20 mm range of actual. And again this is using the same toolmaker’s rule.
The upshot here is that assuming accuracy/precision is as stated that the numbers aren’t bad and the instrument is doing what is claimed.
Does this help?
Peter: “The long term trend is quite clear.”
The trend you link is 0,2 m every 100 years, and this is the normal sea level rise of the last 200 years. Also a sea level rise which the earth normally has occured since the beginning of the interglacial period 8000 years ago. (Before that the sea level rise was more like 200 cm every 100 years, constantly for 1000s of years.)
So what was your point?
[Personal attack deleted~Charles the Moderator]
I think someone should really invite Hansen to Wallowa County (pack long johns). It is 26.5 degrees colder than last year, 8.6 degrees colder than last month, and currently raining on all the baled hay still sitting in fields. Last week we had 32 degree frost on the ground. Looks like we will be getting frost on pumpkin BLOOMS way before we get frost on the pumpkin! Just sayin. Scare tactics? If Hansen wants to be scared, let him try some of our still snow bound mountain trails.
“This doesn’t mean that global warming is not true. As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase, causing the sea to warm and expand somewhat.”
C02 is absorbing most of what it can absorb, and it is about as powerful as a mouse pushing a huge boulder uphill compared to the sun’s influence and that of cosmic rays. A strong mouse? Yes, but still a mouse.
The idea that temperature will moderately increase is a theory, not a fact. To learn more from a true expert on sea levels look at the work of Morner.
“Countering the water being held back in dams, is the water that has been drained from the world’s aquifers over the last century.”
You don’t understand the game. You only count in one direction.
Peter. When it comes to sea level rise, it is of course not correct to mention a few years as a trend or sea level rise as something with relevance to long term mean values. Josh Willis in the Argo project, which measured the sea temperature, suggested that the sea level rise the last 4 years indicated that the temperature instruments had some error.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
That’s stupid, I think.
Btw it seems actually as the sea level rise periodically has slowed down about every 11th year and actually during solar minimum. (I think Jennifer Marohasy mentioned this in a post):
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/holgate_sea_level.JPG
Changes in clouds, precipitation and the atmosphere’s water vapor content may very well be an off set from the average (normal) sea level rise.
Finally: Criticize Lomborg for what he’s saying, not with comments he’s no scientist and that others has claimd he has errors (the site you linked for those errors I found extremely weak). Lomborg is an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School and no one has claimed he is anything else.
What is Peter?
Please back down from the personal attacks, not just try to get around the proscription~Charles the moderator.
MarkW, water withdrawn from the ground is often surplus water that would flow into an ocean or sea eventually. The use of that water short of mining the stuff (dropping the water table) may effect ocean levels but only while human make temporary use of it. Afterwards it either infiltrates back into the ground or is exposed to evaporation where it goes back into the water cycle.
Well, except that cache of water balloons my son has behind the rear fence.
AnonyMoose:
“Hansen has become your classic, story-book mad scientist.”
For any of you that read Moby Dick, you know that Hansen’s psychological profile is almost perfectly described by Melville in the character of Captain Ahab.
It appears that Roy Spencer has just testified before the US Senate committee on environment. So at last they have had an opportunity to hear from someone not obsessed with killing the great white whale of global warming. And they have also been presented with an alternative cause for the warming that has been observed. This is going to have Hansen steaming and screaming. He will probably call for Spencer to be arrested and tried.
Here is Spencer’s testimony:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=e12b56cb-4c7b-4c21-bd4a-7afbc4ee72f3
Ron McCarley (09:05:30) (and other times),
FWIW: I went and asked the Jason people about their measurement accuracy and they pointed me to:
http://ilrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/science_analysis/docs/Luthcke_Jason_1cm_POD_published_p399_s.pdf
I haven’t completely read it but it has the following statement a:bout the orbit measurement accuracy. I think (but am not yet sure) that the Z axis is altitude.
Don’t confuse orbital accuracy budget with precision. Think of accuracy as the known absolute altitude and the standard deviation (its repeatability, if you will) is the precision. Another way of putting it: don’t confuse measurement precision with the ‘true’ value confidence interval. Charles Price and Tony Edwards gave fairly good explanations.
Nils Axel Morner wrote a piece a few years ago in which he recounted the ‘handling’ of satellite data on sea level rise. The first ten years of data (1992 – 2002) showed zero trend up or down, which did not agree with the tide gauges preferred by the IPCC (Hong Kong, for example, where ground subsidence was occurring). So, the following year (2003) the satellite data was corrected by adding a 2.3 mm/year increase to the essentially flat raw data. Dr. Morner was, to say the least, apoplectic.
Based on satellite and tide gauge data, I’d say the recent (2 decades) annual sea level rise is 0 mm, +/- 5 mm.
Senator Boxer saw fit to point out during the hearing that Dr. Spencer is the “official climatologist” of the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, in an attempt to discredit his testimony.
Yorick
The 19 inch drop in Lake Superior is equivalent to a change of 0.00186 inches (0.0472 millimeters) in the world’s oceans.
The oceans cover some 140 million square miles. It takes a lot of water to change the sea levels.
King Canute learned, if he didn’t already know, he could not stop the seas.
http://www.viking.no/e/people/e-knud.htm
However, in his acceptance speech, Obama claimed he would stop the sea rising.
Maybe the sea is already obeying Obama, even before his election.